Happiness does not require an intimate rhetorical distance?

As most of you know, I have been writing this blog entries for an argumentative writing class, but this semester is almost over, and sadly, this will be the last blog entry I will write (as a requirement for this class at least). I was searching CNN on the web and came across a very interesting article, one that I thought would be a perfect topic for my final blog entry; it is about social networks and that studies have shown that happiness actually is contagious. Usually in my blog entries, I relate something I have read in the news or in other current events to what I have read in class, but I will not be doing that for this blog entry. Of course, I could probably somehow relate the article to what Aristotle wrote about happiness being achieved through virtuous actions, but that would be stretching it. Since this is the final entry, I figured I'd have some fun with it, and share this interesting article.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/05/happiness.social.network/index.html

The article states that "new research shows that in a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another." 3 degrees? That seems like a lot! Further, the article also goes on to explain a study being conducted about Facebook and it is stated that "The researchers are also looking at the phenomenon on Facebook, which has more than 120 million active users. This study, which has not yet been published, looked at who smiles in their profile pictures who doesn't, and whether their connections also smile or not." This study is apparently looking at whether or not smiling is contagious, which could perhaps be associated with happiness, although not in all cases.

Going back to the first finding, though, that a person up to three degrees removed from you can still make you happy if they themselves are happy, poses an interesting topic of discussion. This is very interesting because of course many of us think, if a friend of ours is happy, of course we have a better chance of being happy ourselves...but a friend of a friend? That seems incredibly distant. Perhaps, close rhetorical distance is not needed to persuade someone to smile and be happy?...